1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a stepping motor driving system, an information recording and reproducing apparatus, and a stepping motor driving method.
2. Background Art
In recent years, an optical disk recording and reproducing apparatus for reproducing an optical disk such as a compact disk (CD) or a digital versatile disk (DVD) is widely used as one of information recording and reproducing apparatuses in various fields. The optical disk recording and reproducing apparatus is configured such that various information are read from the optical disk and are recorded into the optical disk by irradiating laser light onto the optical disk and by receiving reflected light from the optical disk while the optical disk mounted on and fixed to a turntable is rotated.
Irradiation of laser light onto the optical disk is performed by an optical pickup device. The optical pickup device mainly has a laser light source and a lens that collects laser light outputted from the laser light source to irradiate laser light onto the optical disk. These elements are mounted within a carriage that is configured to slide in a diameter direction of the optical disk. The carriage mainly performs two operations of a trace operation for releasing a shift of the lens which is generated at the time of a track following operation and a search operation in which the carriage moves up to a target address in the optical disk.
The carriage is generally driven with a direct current (DC) motor. The DC motor is generally configured to transfer power to a feed screw via a deceleration gear. If the feed screw rotates by rotational force of the DC motor, the carriage slides in the diameter direction of the optical disk according to the rotation of the feed screw (for example, JP-A-2003-58192 (FIG. 1)).
Further, an optical disk recording and reproducing apparatus which uses a stepping motor as a motor for driving the carriage has been proposed. The stepping motor is generally configured to control a rotational angle according to the number of pulses which are applied to the stepping motor. Accordingly, the rotation amount of the feed screw and the positional control of the carriage can be performed with high precision.